As Good As It Gets

I watched an interesting programme on I-player recently looking at unfinished works of art and our need for endings.

Should incomplete novels and symphonies be left that way or should another artist pick up the baton and finish the job?

A need for endings has a strong hold on our lives - a desire for situations to be resolved in some way.

Why is it that I watch a film to the end even if I realise halfway through that I'm not enjoying it?

This was beautifully expressed in the TV programme by a reference to the critic Frank Kermode who noted that even though a clock may tick, tick, tick we have invented an alternate tock to satisfy our need for a release from the tension of something that never ends.

I think the need for resolution plays a big part in our unconscious desires and our understanding of the world.

John Gray explores the idea in his book 'Black Mass' and looks at its underlying importance throughout civilisation.

Gray's view is that ideas of a final resolution have led to misguided evangelical crusades that have done more harm than good from the terror of the French revolution to the Bush/Blair policy of invading Iraq.

I think the notion that there is a promised land just around the corner has a profound effect on our personal lives and ambitions. If we could just get that pay rise/ new car/ just get everything sorted out, then we would be happy.

We might want an ending but that doesn't mean there is one and maybe we would be better off just taking pleasure in the tick, tick, tick of existence.

Philosophy of Fairness and Executive Pay

THE DIRECTOR of an executive recruitment agency said on the Today programme last week that anybody over the age of seven who believes in fairness is a fool.

She was taking part in a discussion about executive pay and whether it's right that the highest-paid people in society have seen their salaries go through the roof while the rest of us have experienced declining living standards.

Her attitude was that life is cruel and unfair, that there are winners and losers, and that it's inevitable and right that some should have more money than they will ever need while others go hungry.

It was Thomas Hobbes, the 17th-century philosopher, who famously said that the life of man was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short". Hobbes argued that, with each individual fighting to fulfil his personal desires, a state of war is the natural condition of mankind.

However, he then went on to show that this is not the way in which humans are obliged to behave.

As we are capable of thinking rationally, we can see that a "war of everyone against everyone" is not in the interests of anyone.

Philosophy is sometimes accused of being too abstract, too far removed from daily life: but Hobbes' clear-eyed view of the world shows that while life can be cruel and unkind, it doesn't have to be that way.

He takes it as a given that we are selfish, that we are driven to gain the maximum possible benefit for ourselves: but he also realises that we make our lives better by working together.

Crucially, as a complete realist, he saw that this co- operation between ultimately selfish individuals requires some structure that will ensure people stand by their obligations to others.

This is the role that the state fulfils in modern society: to ensure that we act with fairness towards one another.

So, according to the law, if you buy something from a shop and it doesn't work then you can take it back and get a refund; that's fair.

As the novel Lord Of The Flies shows, it may be that fairness does not exist naturally – that, left to our own devices, it would be abandoned – but we have created a concept of fairness that the majority of people live by which improves all of our lives.

Collective decisions on what constitutes that fairness will never be easy, but the question of whether it's right that some chief executives earn up to 200 times more than their employees is something we should all consider – even after our seventh birthday.

Church leaders fail to walk the walk

We are waiting to hear what action the people in charge of St Paul’s cathedral are going to take against anti-capitalist protestors camped out in the grounds.

These protestors say that it is unfair that jobs are lost, benefits are slashed and services like libraries and nurseries are closing as a result of the ongoing financial crisis.

If the Church of England acted in line with the ideals that it claims to believe in then it would support those who are complaining about the rich getting phenomenally richer while the poor get kicked in the teeth.

But instead the church leaders bleat about health and safety and organise evictions. It’s very clear that their only interest is in pacifying the establishment of which they are a part.

Although I see no reason for believing in any religion, I appreciate the pastoral work carried out by some churchgoers and their message of kindness and compassion.

But the actions of those in charge of St Paul’s show very clearly that when the chips are down the principles they profess to live by go out the window.

If they want to be taken seriously they should heed the words of the French philosopher Michel de Montaigne who said: “The conduct of our lives is the true reflection of our thoughts.”

What we do is much more important than what we talk about doing.

Philosophy and the X Factor

The X philosophy

The mighty X Factor is upon us and - even after swapping that nice lad from Salford for the man with the most famous moobs in show business - is set to keep millions of viewers entranced, thrilled and enraged every Saturday night for the coming months.

The programme is scorned by musicians and mocked by critics yet adored by enough of the British public to make it one of the top television events of the year.

Why is that? I think the key to the show’s success lies in the philosophy of the X Factor.

It was Aristotle who said that we should all strive for excellence in our lives. Just as we say that a knife is good if it performs its function properly – eg. cutting vegetables - we can be judged by how well we carry out the function of being human.

One essential aspect of being a good person is to find where your natural skills lie and to develop those skills to your full potential. So those of us who watched an incredible young singer from Northern Ireland perform a stunning version of Elton John’s My Song witnessed someone with great natural talent expressing that talent to the best of her abilities.

Conversely, there are some truly terrible acts that probably shouldn’t be put on television at all. When it’s bad it’s really bad and these people have completely misunderstood where their natural talents lie – unfortunately being ridiculed on national television is a tough way of finding out about a fundamental lesson.

Chin Up

The idea of the stiff upper lip is often held up for ridicule as a relic of an emotionally buttoned up past.

But maybe we have been too quick to discard this approach to life.

When it comes to a choice between the stiff upper lip and the emotional incontinence that is now all too common, I prefer the former as an attitude.

Some claim that the death of Princess Diana was the watershed moment. Instead of responding with grace - resigned to the fact that terrible things will sometimes happen – there were hundreds of thousands of people out on the streets pouring out their supposed grief over someone they didn’t know.

We have now become a society where people are endlessly encouraged to talk about their feelings – to ‘let it all out’. Unfortunately it seems that the more we talk about how we feel, the more we want to talk about how we feel, so that we end up treating everyday problems as cause for counselling, rather than as a problem to be shrugged off.

While I would be the first to encourage people to engage with their emotions and rational decision making I think this can be taken too far. We could take some advice from the Stoics, who argued that the key to happiness lay in accepting the world as it is rather than wishing it to be otherwise. As Epictetus said: “We must make the best of what is under our control, and take the rest as its nature is.”